It's a strange one how we choose to mourn these people we've never really known. Are we celebrating the legacy they left behind with a regretful tear in our eye; are we bitter and devastated by what they still had to give; or are we merely emotionally cashing-in on a stranger's darkest moment? Of course, the manner in which Robin Williams passed away this week puts these sorts of questions in a different light, as it does, in a sense, the work he left behind.
So it's difficult to say what my intentions really were when I sat down to remember the great comic's finest roles. Was it a need to feel nostalgic; a need to remember him how we hoped he always was; or just to crudely get a sense of my own mortality; whatever the case I choose, in my humble opinion, his two best roles: As the troubled psychiatrist Sean McGuire in Gus Van Sant's Good Will Hunting and as the romantic English teacher John Keating in Peter Weir's Dead Poet's Society.
I remembered Williams' terrific performances in these, admittedly, not so dissimilar films being somewhat the same. However, the similarities between the two characters were truly startling. Like Williams himself, as I can only assume, both Keating and McGuire are anti-establishment, to a certain degree; both seem to exert strength and fragility in equal measure; and, most devastating of all, both seem to touch the lives of so many around them while, at the very same moment, seeming so desperately alone.
In light of this week's devastating events, the resonance of these stories seems to grab you by the lapels and refuse to let go. Both films, at their core, are rousing battle cries, telling you to go grab life by the balls; never let your your chin drop; seize the day and all that bag... Just try and hold it together as Keating quotes Whitman's "the powerful play goes on and you may contribute a verse" ; as McGuire solemnly washes away his troubles with a bottle of scotch and, in that terrific film's climactic scene, as he finally breaks through to Matt Damon's troubled genius by repeatedly telling him "It's not your fault".
Experiencing these films in the knowledge that this strong, impassioned, beautiful man took his life just a few days ago is almost too hard to bear, but for the sad, useless week that's in it, both are truly essential viewing. Rarely is cinema so transcendental.
